So how do we get to utopia?  We take what we know, figure out what we want to be different, and try various solutions to get from where we are to where we want to go.  This is nothing new.  The concept of thesis, antithesis and synthesis has been around a long time.  It's just time we used it.  We establish a way to actively input our needs, wants and desires (newades).  Each person's set of newades would be unique, but we would then have a handle on the general requirements of all people.  This would not be "big brother" because the specific newades of a specific person would not be allowed to be examined, only the aggregate sum.  With this information in hand we can use every tooo we have.  Systems analysis could be used to try out various possibilities in computer models.  And more importantly, we could do empirical testing by establishing communities of appropriate size for whatever is being tested.

This method will be a bit problematic because people have not been raised and have not lived for a long time in a community with a new test set of rules for life that may well be far different from those that people have lived with all their lives up until that point.  But it is a method that may be able to demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of the new rule set being tested.  What would come out of this would be a large main community that has incorporated the best of what has been shown to work by the small community tests, and many small communities with rule sets that vary among the communities both to allow people to have a choice and a chance to live somewhere where they think the rules make sense; and to give a large number of ideas for ideal societies a venue in which to be analyzed and proven.

I think that economic scarcity has a large part to play in the way people (mis-)treat one another.  There is a philosophy that holds that if we could be happy with what we have, then by definition there would not be the desire to have any more or better.  This denies human nature because as long as better does or can exist and we are aware of it, we as humans will instinctively want at least some parts of what we do not have. The question is how do we respond to those desires?  This is where the flaws of humankind do us in.  Can we set up how we learn to live together and the rules by which we live to progressively surmount the flaws?  What about a truly demand-based society with a check to counter the tyranny of the masses, as opposed to the supply-based system we have now?

By supply-based I mean a company supplies a good or service in the marketplace, and the company grows or collapses based on whether that good or service sells enough to cover the cost of providing it.  Which translates into all sorts of weird ramifications --- billion dollar advertising efforts, PACs forcing pork through the legislative system, companies making their best efforts to pay as little as possible to the workers (and yet these same companies can somehow afford the six and seven figure salaries they pay their top executives?), playing state against state (or country against country) to see which will give the most to a company to locate there, playing semantics and legal cat-and-mouse with the government for years over whether their product is unsafe (or lethal) because the people still buy it, and on and on.

By demand-based I mean a system where all people are able to weigh in on any issue that matters to them --- from whether they want whole wheat bread to demanding that an industrial complex stop polluting air that blows across their city.  It could be expanded to include politics, such that any issue being considered would be subject to a local / regional / national / global referendum.  The one necessary and missing element is the check against the tyranny of the masses (one example is racism).

Suppose we start with the economics.  If everyone knew what everyone else wanted in some sort of anonymous posting venue, it would be much easier to align efforts to make more of what everyone wants without as much duplication or misplacement of effort.  Then when a need or want is satisfied, the people who have fulfilled that need or want would know what they would be needed to do next.  There would be no unemployment. There would be no inflation or recession.  There would be no reason for large corporations to sandbag progress.  There would be no need of the top executives of large corporations because the companies would take their direction from the knowledge of what people want instead of from the hemming and hawing of six and seven figure salaried executives with gargantuan "incentive packages".  That would mean that the "haves" would have only marginally more than the "have-nots". And with respect to "a rising tide raises all ships", the tide would rise more equitably and consequentially could rise more quickly, assuming that is what everyone decided they wanted.

A major key to unleashing the world economy is a continued flow of abundant, cheap energy.  It was energy (streams drove mills, coal drove steam engines, petroleum fueled flight) that gave us the industrial revolution.  And it is the industrial revolution that gave us material wealth on such a widely distributed basis as could not have been drempt of two hundred years ago.  If we expect the march of technology to continue as is has, we must commit to a consistent, cheap, abundant source of energy.  Geothermal energy is an optimal source.  It is available worldwide; and it is secure; it is clean; it is abundant to the point of being almost inexhaustible; it can't be made into weapons; it doesn't take a large amount of earth's surface.  It will unseat a very powerful energy oligopoly.

So to reach the energy, we have to make another leap.  We as a world will have to learn to let go of what we have to embrace what we know will be better.  The fear of change is deep-seated in all of us.  And anyone who has power has no reason to want to give it up unless forced to do so by something more powerful.  Machiavelli had something to say about that.  But if the power of an individual or group exists because everyone else agreed to them to have it, it is in everyone's ability to take it back.

The exception to this is the force of fear.  I will certainly be more likely to do the bidding of someone holding a gun to my head.  But if the power even of a group holding guns is viewed relative to the power of everyone else, unless the group is very large it would not withstand everyone else taking the power back.  Even Hitler was eventually defeated.  The point of power in Utopia is that everyone has their own equal share.

If a large production unit is producing something we no longer need, we as a whole simply say it is time to move on.  If it happens to be a large, multi-billion dollar oil industry, so be it.  Up until now we have essentially "muddled through" as the world changed us and we changed the world.  The option to passively accept what comes needs to give way to actively figuring out what we want and then making it happen.  Science and technology are moving too fast now, and will only get faster.  If we expect science and technology to be used responsibly and effectively we must decide and commit to that.  Nuclear energy has been used for bombs and power.  Someone chose in either case.

As communications get better, faster, providing more throughput, we will have more and more ability to have custom production based on our individual specifications.  This could be individually tailored clothes based on a topographical file of your body.  Or choosing from a design firm a car body that can simply be dropped onto an existing, otherwise complete chasis (old or new).  Or a gourmet dinner for two created upon the specifications of a restaurant in Paris, served in your back yard as you watch the sunset, delivered by a universal restaurant delivery service.

Of course all the goods in the world are worthless if we aren't alive because we poisoned the earth beyond its ability to sustain life.  And we will have lost the earth's greatest gift, it's heritage of incredibly diverse flora and fauna, if we don't take care of it.  Postage stamp sized parks are not enough to maintain many of the earth's species which have roamed large areas for food and living.  As space technology improves the goal of moving humanity into space will be more and more attainable.

Space will give us a place to create the environment we have strived to create here on earth.  Monocultural agriculture will be a snap because we can control every aspect of an agricultural space container.  No weevils, grasshoppers, locusts or other insects that we think of as pests, relative to agricultural endeavors.  No molds or fungus that we don't put there in the first place.  No animals that might destroy the planted crop.  No drought or flood conditions.  And should something go awry, it is a simple matter of resetting the environment and starting over.

All the things that nature naturally sends across every farmer's land here on earth belong here.  They all have a reason for being in the ecological cycle.  Our attempts to surmount them are romantic and heroic.  But they are not necessarily particularly effective, especially on the scale of the individual farmer.  As agricultural technology improves, harvests will get better and better for those who have a good growing season.  For these lucky people, there is a market that is oversupplied by their bounty so they lose money on the low prices their produce fetch.  For the unlucky there is nothing to take to market.  This is a real catch 22.  As we shift our production to space, we can turn land back to nature, and we can finally know with certainty that we will be able to feed all the people of the world.

Now that we know we will have children who will not starve and will have a better, safer happier life, we can adjust our priorities to have just enough children to keep a constant population instead of thinking that we have to have many children so that perhaps two or three will survive to adulthood and be able to have children of their own  We have succeeded in being fruitful and multiplying.  We don't have to do that anymore.  And there is a bonus that comes from this different way of looking at childbearing.

If we keep our number of people the same, we don't have to keep making a larger and larger amount of material goods just to maintain status quo.  We can start improving what we have so that everyone can have the best of everything.  Crafted items could replace the rubber-stamped, poorly assembled, low-grade, fall-apart, almost-real vinyl-coated junk that passes for nice.  And that is on all levels, including but certainly not limited to houses, cars, furniture, transportation, toys, vacations.  Everything.

In a relationship you may choose to look outside and wish you were there, or you can focus on what is inside.  You are not required to want to stay inside, but the point of Utopia is for everyone to think of how to make that be the obviously best alternative.  Utopia will not automatically exist, and will not stay the same over time.  The beauty of Utopia is that it can accommodate many constructive situations simultaneously.  We will need for there to be many such facets to see empirically which work the best in what areas, and then try a new facet that combines the best features.

Sadly, there will be some who still choose not to align within and they need a place to exist outside, especially those who do not have the capacity to do no harm.  Even these people deserve some sort of chance for Utopia, but by their actions they essentially are asking to find some other Utopia with a different set of guidelines.

Once people begin to see how the economy can improve it will only take a small leap to rework the political system as well.  Then as people saw how their world was blooming as never before, the new system would fairly painlessly be able to accommodate newcomers, much as the US once was very receptive to immigrants.  As the new system proved to be the preferred method of government it would eventually encompass the whole world.

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